'Never hope to escape me, madam,' I would say: 'offer to marry another man, and he dies upon this sword, which never yet met its master.

Fly from me, and I will follow you, though it were to the gates of Hades.' I promise you this was very different language to that she had been in the habit of hearing from her Jemmy-Jessamy adorers.

You should have seen how I scared the fellows from her.
When I said in this energetic way that I would follow Lady Lyndon across the Styx if necessary, of course I meant that I would do so, provided nothing more suitable presented itself in the interim.

If Lyndon would not die, where was the use of my pursuing the Countess?
And somehow, towards the end of the Spa season, very much to my mortification I do confess, the knight made another rally: it seemed as if nothing would kill him.

'I am sorry for you, Captain Barry,' he would say, laughing as usual.